Public-key cryptography was mathematically elegant and also quite elementary. That’s what made it so powerful and so wonderful. The NSA said “Wait a minute: this work should be classified.” They had been accustomed to being the only place that cryptography was done. They didn’t want a competitor developing algorithms that maybe they would have trouble breaking into. They wanted to hold the keys to the kingdom. There was a big fight between the academic and industry research community and the NSA. But it was settled fairly amicably, fairly quickly. The next problem was who would control the development of cryptography standards for the US government. The NSA does this for … Continue reading Susan Landau